Impact of Cosmic Ray-driven Outflows on Lyman-$α$ Emission in Cosmological Simulations

Abstract

Cosmic ray (CR) feedback has been proposed as a powerful mechanism for driving warm gas outflows in galaxies. We use cosmological magnetohydrodynamic simulations to investigate the impact of CR feedback on neutral hydrogen (HI) in a $10^{11}\,M_\odot$ dark matter halo at $2<z<4$. To this end, we post-process the simulations with ionizing radiative transfer and perform Monte Carlo Lyman-$α$ (Lya) transfer calculations. CR feedback reduces HI column densities around young stars, thereby allowing more Lya photons to escape and consequently offering a better match to the Lya luminosities of observed Lya emitters. Although galaxies with CR-driven outflows have more extended HI in the circumgalactic medium, two Lya line properties sensitive to optical depth and gas kinematics - the location of the red peak in velocity space ($v_\mathrm{red}$) and relative strength of the blue-to-red peaks ($B/R$) - cannot distinguish between the CR-driven and non-CR simulations. This is because Lya photons propagate preferentially along low HI density channels created by the ionizing radiation, thereby limiting the scattering with volume-filling HI. In contrast, the observed low flux ratios between the valley and peak and the surface brightness profiles are better reproduced in the model with CR-driven outflows because the Lya photons interact more before escaping, rather than being destroyed by dust as is the case in the non-CR simulation. We discuss the potential cause of the paucity of sightlines in simulations that exhibit prominent red peaks and large $v_\mathrm{red}$, which may require the presence of more volume-filling HI.